Ladybug

A Chapter by Tony Bologna

I woke up the next morning to the intrusive glare of two huge green eyes bulging from a shiny copper countenance that dominated my entire field of vision. “F**k off, Bug,” I moaned as I firmly palmed her face and pushed it away from my own. The fifteen year old girl knocked my hand away and grinned warmly. “Why the f**k are you in my house,” I demanded, even though I couldn’t help but grin back.

“I’m a welcomed guest in this home, ma’am,” she answered insincerely, I guess referring to my younger brother had let her in �"because my mom sure as f**k wouldn’t want her in here �" and was probably elsewhere in the house rolling a blunt judging by the smell that became more pungent every passing second.

“So why are you in my room, then,” I joked. “You’re JonJon’s friend, not mine.”

She sucked her teeth. “Girl, relax. Ain’t nobody here to see yo’ uglass,” she flung back with an exaggerated roll of the neck. “We just want yo’ bong so we can put the blunt in it.” I rolled my eyes back at her in the same theatrical manner before reaching to my left to tug open the bottom drawer of my nightstand and remove a long, clear bong from beneath a pile of miscellaneous bullshit whose purpose was more to conceal the bong than anything. As I did this, my younger brother stepped into the room and stood beside Bug, a fat a*s blunt between his lips waiting to be lit. Side by side they watched me beseechingly as I clutched the bong, hoping I’d forfeit details of what happened last night along with it. But nah. Instead I returned their hard stares as I handed over the bong, saying nothing while I smirked at them. They kept gaze with me as Bug reached for the piece, causing her shirt to ride up and expose the bevel of a familiar .380 Bersa protruding from the waistband of faux-distressed Robin jeans �"it had belonged to her sister once upon a time. I guess it was hers now.

Noticing this jarred me out of the weird quasi-staring contest we were having, prompting me to teasingly inquire, “C-Block still giving you problems, huh” as I gestured to the gun sticking out of her pants.

“Man, hell nah. Them n****s was outta order the other day, so we had to blow at they a*s. That’s all,” she replied, half laughing, half offended that I’d insinuate such a thing. She looked down and pulled the bottom of her black shirt, with the words ‘Terror Town’ emblazoned across the front in bold red letters, back over the matte black weapon before refocusing her green glare. I just stared up at JonJon. What the f**k was that supposed to mean?

“Aww, that wasn’t ‘bout s**t, don’t worry ‘bout it,” he tried to dismiss. Still I leered at him.

“What happened last night, JonJon?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “We was comin’ from Bug house back to the hood last night and like six of them p***y a*s n****s jumped me and chased us back to her crib, but I’m all well and I took care of it. Don’t even got a scratch on me. Now I’m gone from it. You tryna smoke,” he asked, changing the subject to keep me from further prying. This had become a recurring theme with JonJon every time he found himself in a jam: in an effort to protect his budding male ego from the oh-so-harrowing prospect of having to ask his big sister for help, he’d instead try to save face by doing some dumb s**t that really only served to escalate things. Because of this when something happened to or involving him I was typically the last to know, usually not until s**t was fucked beyond repair. Like, I knew the Cobras. All of them. They were f*****g a******s, but they could be reasoned with; now that was pretty much out the window. I mean, we shot at them. You can’t take that back. What was before an uncomfortable mutual tolerance now had the potential to descend into yet another open conflict to add to the other three we were actively dealing with.

I huffed loudly at him as I buried my face in my left palm. “S**t, JonJon,” I hissed at him from between my fingers. Bug just stood there still smirking at me stupidly, I guess thinking that this was JonJon’s burden to bear even though she was just as culpable as he was, with her supplying the gun and all. I stood up from the bed and firmly shoved her, sending her toppling onto the carpet. “WHAT THE F**K ARE YOU LOOKIN’ AT? YOU’RE IN DEEP S**T TOO M**********R,” I shrieked at her. A hard scowl had replaced the dumb smirk as she began lifting herself from the floor and preparing to charge me back. I stomped over and stood over her with my fists balled while I shot her the nastiest look I could muster, tacitly daring her to stand back up without my permission. Disarmed, she flopped back onto her elbows and looked away, trying her best to avoid my gaze. Still standing over Bug, I turned back toward JonJon and asked �" even though I was addressing both of them �" “Who got hit?”

“Nobody.”

“Don’t f****n’ lie to me.”

“I’m fa’real.”

I sighed, partially relieved. OK, maybe this could be salvaged. I looked back down at Bug. “We should all be so thankful that you’re such F**K UPS. You didn’t f**k us over as thoroughly as you could have. Either way, you can both expect violations in the near future. In the meantimeee,” I crooned in a sing-songy voice as I sashayed over to JonJon before reaching up and mashing my index finger in his face, prodding it roughly to punctuate each of my words. “If you so much as swing a f*****g fist at anyone we’re not already into it with, especially C-Block, without my say-so I’ll string you from the ceiling by your shoelaces and let the guys use your face as a f*****g speedbag.” Finally I plucked the blunt from his lips and added, “And as a matter of fact, yeah, I do wanna smoke.” I stormed out of the room to the balcony with JonJon and Bug trailing meekly behind.

I slid open the glass door and then the screen behind it before stepping out and walking to the railing. I leaned over and gazed down onto the street below and Lake Michigan beyond it, seventeen stories below. Bug and JonJon flopped into a couple of patio chairs and started working the blunt into the bong’s slide. Down on the street I could see some of the guys from Coles Mobb clustered on the corner of 73^rd & Coles about half a block away. Surveying them with detached indifference, I counted maybe eight of them in all. I didn’t know anything about Coles Mobb. Nobody really knew anything about Coles Mobb. They were like the Switzerland of South Shore: they mostly kept to their little corner of the neighborhood bounded by 71^st to the north, 74^th to the south, and Yates to the west with the lake as the de facto eastern border. They didn’t bother anyone, so no one bothered them. I don’t think a lot of people were familiar enough with the GDs on Coles to wanna bother them anyway. I couldn’t even tell you what any of them looked like, and I could recognize most of the gangbangers around the neighborhood by face�" the ones that mattered, at least. It was kinda crazy considering I lived less than a block away from where these kids hung out.

The sound of stifled coughs behind me tugged me back into reality. I turned around to find JonJon choking and the bong now cupped precariously in Bug’s tiny hands as she took from it a giant hit that seemed to inflate her. She cleared the last of it before sputtering and exhaling the smoke in a fit of sharp hacks instead of a smoothly blown cloud.

“Don’t drop my piece, dummy.”

“I’m dyin’ and all you care about is this stupid a*s pipe. I should toss this muhfucka in the street right now,” she rasped right before cackling and handing it over to me.

“Oh, you must be trying to go with it, then,” I replied coldly, still pretty pissed at her. I grabbed the glass from her, planted myself on the ground with it nested in my lap, and took a hearty rip of my own. My hands were just as small as Bug’s, so I preferred not to hold and hit it while also standing up.

Ever the thorn in my side, JonJon abruptly interjected before I could even exhale with, “So what you do last night?”

I sighed deeply and smoke poured from my lips in light wafts. “I’m not even high yet and you’re blowing it.”

He grinned and side-eyed me. I mockingly side-eyed him back. “I just figured since we was bein’ so open and honest and s**t…”

I laughed out loud. “That’s… not how this works, bud.”

They were both growing visibly irritated now. “Mannnn,” Bug started. “Why you won’t tell us? We not gone tell nobody else. We solid as hell, shorty!”

I chuckled. “A likely story. Anyway look, stop asking me. Because I’m not telling you. And that’s it. But pay attention out here, you just might hear about it.” Younger gang members tended to brag too f*****g much, most often about s**t that had nothing to do with them in the first place. It was best they were kept on a need-to-know basis as far as hood business went.

They pouted at me. Oh well. “What are you guys up to today,” I asked, trying to steer the conversation away from that.

“Shiiiit. Try to not get jumped on by the Cobras again, I guess. But that’s gone be hard considerin’ I’m not even allowed to protect myself and all…”

“JonJon, STOP. Leaving and coming back with a gun is not self-defense, first of all. Second, I never f*****g said that. I didn’t. What I actually said was ‘Don’t be out here stirring up a buncha bullshit that I end up having to take the brunt of’. Just cool the f**k out for a minute. As a matter of fact, if you weren’t an idiot, you’d stay the f**k from over there until me and Cook get a chance to straighten this s**t out. But you won’t. Because you are.”

“Hold up, b***h. I live over there; what I’m ‘posed to do,” Bug piped up.

“Get a ride. It’s not f*****g rocket science. It’s not brain surgery. It’s not even algebra. Pick up phone. Call person with car.”

“Alright damnnn,” she whined back at me. JonJon just took another hit from the bong. I don’t think he was listening to me anymore.

“Anyway, what are you really doing today,” I asked, no longer just making small talk.

“Iono... prolly’ just this right here. Might go f**k with Skinny and Lil’ Derrick later.

Depend on when mama come home.”

That grabbed my attention. “You guys goin’ over Skinny’s house? If so, when? More importantly, when are you leaving?”

“Aw you tryna get that vitamin D, huh,” JonJon so boldly blew off my question.

I snorted. “As a matter of fact, yeah, m**********r. Now answer the question.”

“S**t, whenever we feel like it, I suppose…”

“You wanna stick around for the show, eh? Right on,” I flung back, trying to get some reverse psychology or some s**t going. I can’t get clam-jammed today.

“Shut up, b***h,” he snapped. Ambiguous. But I was feeling optimistic.

After that there was relative silence; we were all too smacked for a conversation. I checked my phone to find an angry text and a missed call from Bunny that reminded me that I did in fact have somewhere to be. The text was 45 minutes old and it read ‘Where tf r u’ with an emoji blowing steam from its nose in frustration. I opened it and replied ‘just woke up and now smoking with jj’ with a blushing smiley face. Before I could even exit the thread and check my other messages, another bubble popped onto the screen reading ‘Youre scum’ with an emoji rolling its eyes. I giggled, only able to respond with ‘i knowwwww im omw’. I braced myself on the railing as I pulled myself from the ground and then dashed back into the house. “I’m going to Zaina’s house,” I called back over my shoulder.

“Yeah,” JonJon tossed back vacantly. Bug had become preoccupied with tossing pocket change off the balcony and I don’t think she even realized I left.

I jogged into my room and paused. What was I doing? Getting dressed? Brushing my teeth? Yeah. Was I forgetting something? I decided to focus on one thing at a time and went into the bathroom to wash up. I flipped on the light and looked at myself in the mirror. Did I feel like wearing makeup today? Nah, too hot. Instead I opted to just wash my face, brush my teeth, and do all those other mundane morning routine things. Once that was all taken care of, I went back into my room and picked out something to wear. This involved rooting around through the piles of unsorted clothes littering my floor, smell-checking each piece that prompted me to pick it up. 90% of my wardrobe was perpetually on the floor; every time I did laundry I would tell myself that I’d just sort and put it all away later but later seldom came.

Eventually I decided on a Madball t-shirt that I had cut into a loose fitting crop top, the one with the album art for ‘Set It Off’ where a guy in a suit was handing an infant a gun; it was my favorite of all the band t-shirts I owned even though I wasn’t super into Madball anymore. With it I tugged on tight black jeans with rips that were initially superficial but with time had frayed into actual gaping holes �" Bunny always joked that I had jeans in my holes whenever I wore them. Last, I stomped into a pair of ratty black Vans I’d had since at least freshman year. After taking a final look at myself in the mirror, I walked back into the living room from where I saw Bug and JonJon still on the balcony, just talking.

“Put that back when you’re done with it,” I said through the screen door.

JonJon looked at me and gave an irreverent thumbs up. I started toward the door but halted when I realized that I was forgetting one last, crucial thing. I stepped back into my room and drew from beneath my mattress the fanny pack. I removed the gun and made sure it was loaded before putting it back and strapping the pack on. Zaina lived right across the street from Bug in the middle of Cobra hood, and to even get that far I would have to walk through Paxtown first.

Finally ready, I walked through the living room, out of the door, and started off.

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